May 3, 2008
We got up early and drove to Pompeii. It was a long drive but it was beautiful. We got to see Montecassino Monastery and Mt. Vesuvius on the way. When we got there, we walked through the city of Pompeii. It covered a very large area and was amazingly well preserved. You could still see the paintings on the walls, and their marble kitchen countertops with holes cut into them. Attached from underneath were clay pots making sinks. That was surprising. We learned that the city was covered in ash from about 70BC until the 1600s? Artifacts started showing up, so it was ruled that no one could take anymore and they started uncovering the city. They started finding voids in the ash that seemed to be air pockets, so they started pouring plaster into these voids and they found the shapes of where bodies were in the positions that they died.
After we finished with Pompeii, we headed to Tuscany by way of the Almalfi Coast. It was amazing how these cities were built on cliffs. The crazy thing was that the only main road along the coast was narrow and the tour busses had a hard time getting through the traffic, so there were lots of delays - 2 hours to be more precise! The people in Southern Italy are so laid back that when traffic was completely stopped, people would just get out of their cars and smoke and visit with each other, or toss a ball around.
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